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Home > Archive > HIV Aids > December 2004 > Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
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Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
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| BLUERHYMER 2004-12-22, 7:06 pm |
| Doctors Without Borders
Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
By Shannon Brownlee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
For the past two decades, medical research has been quietly corrupted by cash
from private industry. Most doctors and academic researchers aren't corrupt in
the sense of intending to defraud the public or harm patients, but rather, more
insidiously, guilty of allowing the pharmaceutical and biotech industries to
manipulate medical science through financial relationships, in effect tainting
the system that is supposed to further the understanding of disease and protect
patients from ineffective or dangerous drugs. More than 60 percent of clinical
studies--those involving human subjects--are now funded not by the federal
government, but by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. That means that
the studies published in scientific journals like Nature and The New England
Journal of Medicine--those critical reference points for thousands of
clinicians deciding what drugs to prescribe patients, as well as for
individuals trying to educate themselves about conditions and science reporters
from the popular media who will publicize the findings--are increasingly likely
to be designed, controlled, and sometimes even ghost-written by marketing
departments, rather than academic scientists. Companies routinely delay or
prevent the publication of data that show their drugs are ineffective. The
majority of studies that found such popular antidepressants as Prozac and
Zoloft to be no better than placebos, for instance, never saw print in medical
journals, a fact that is coming to light only now that the Food and Drug
Administration has launched a reexamination of those drugs.
Today, private industry has unprecedented leverage to dictate what doctors and
patients know--and don't know--about the $160 billion worth of pharmaceuticals
Americans consume each year. This is an unsettling charge that many (if not a
majority) of doctors and academic researchers don't want to acknowledge. Once
grasped, however, the full scope and consequences of medical conflict of
interest beget grave doubts about the veracity of wide swaths of medical
science. As Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of The Journal of the American
Medical Association (JAMA), puts it, "This is all about bypassing science.
Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don't know what
papers they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn't know what to
believe."
Clinical trial and error
How did we get to this point? What effect is industry influence having on the
treatment of patients? And why are the medical journals not more vigilant to
weed out papers that have been distorted by conflict of interest? The answers
to these questions begin, oddly enough, with an amendment to U.S. patent law
called the Bayh-Dole Act. Passed in 1980, Bayh-Dole for the first time
permitted universities to commercialize products and inventions without losing
their federal research funding, the seed money for innovative research. The
brainchild of George Keyworth II, President Reagan's science advisor, who was
watching the United States get beaten in world markets by the Japanese,
Bayh-Dole was intended to stimulate advanced technological invention and speed
its transfer from university labs into private industry, where it could be put
to work spurring U.S. productivity.
It seemed like a win-win proposition. Indeed, Bayh-Dole has helped launch the
biotech industry and has propelled several life-saving products to market. The
basic research behind Gleevec, for instance, an incredibly effective new
anti-cancer drug, was done by a university scientist. The drug's manufacturer,
Novartis, stepped in and provided additional funding for development. In 1984,
private companies contributed a mere $26 million to university research
budgets. By 2000, they were ponying up $2.3 billion, an increase of 9,000
percent that provided much needed funds to universities at a time when the cost
of doing medical research was skyrocketing.
And what about us patients? What are we to do with the knowledge that much of
what passes as science in medicine is little more than gussied-up marketing?
There isn't much we can do. And so, I say if you're ill, if you are ailing, or
just sick at heart, go find a doctor who listens, who holds your hand. Just
make sure you find a doctor who looks at evidence, not opinion, and when she
pulls out the prescription pad, start asking a lot of questions.
Shannon Brownlee is a fellow at the New America Foundation.
SEE:
Gangsters In Medicine - Rense.com Gangsters In Medicine By Thomas Smith
Valley@healingmatters.com. c. 2002-3 By Thomas Smith All rights reserved
12-23-2 ...
http://www.rense.com/general33/gang.htm
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-22, 7:06 pm |
| I agree. Medical journals are now little more than less glossy drugs
company brochures.
The sad thing is that when you have companies with advertising budgets
running into the billions they are in a position to buy most everyone.
Money and medical care simply don't mix in the long run. A new Lear Jet or
actually helping some poor black woman in Watts is a no brainer for a
drugs company executive.
Wooosh........and just look at those leather seats. "I feel just great"
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-22, 7:06 pm |
| “These long-term nonprogressors [Hiv+ people who remained healthy] are a
heterogeneous group with respect to viral load and HIV-1 responses…none
had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”
AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-23, 2:06 am |
| The link between industry, authors and their results By Jeremy Laurance
23 April 2004
Cancer drugs: Just 5 per cent of studies funded by the pharmaceutical
industry reached unfavourable conclusions about the companies' drugs
compared with 38 per cent paid for by non-profit organisations. ( Journal
of the American Medical Association , 1999)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/he...sp?story=514316
Drug firms profit from 'murky' link with journals, study shows Companies
are misleading doctors, patients and governments to push their medicines,
says a special edition of the 'BMJ' By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs
Correspondent
30 May 2003
The "murky" relationships between the world's leading pharmaceutical
companies, supposedly independent medical journals and family doctors are
exposed in the British Medical Journal today.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/he...sp?story=410738
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-23, 2:06 am |
| SPACES REMOVED (top article)
Doctors Without Borders
Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
By Shannon Brownlee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
For the past two decades, medical research has been quietly corrupted by
cash from private industry.
Most doctors and academic researchers aren't corrupt in the sense of
intending to defraud the public or harm patients, but rather, more
insidiously, guilty of allowing the pharmaceutical and biotech industries
to manipulate medical science through financial relationships, in effect
tainting the system that is supposed to further the understanding of
disease and protect patients from ineffective or dangerous drugs.
More than 60 percent of clinical studies--those involving human
subjects--are now funded not by the federal government, but by the
pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
That means that the studies published in scientific journals like Nature
and The New England Journal of Medicine--those critical reference points
for thousands of clinicians deciding what drugs to prescribe patients, as
well as for individuals trying to educate themselves about conditions and
science reporters from the popular media who will publicize the
findings--are increasingly likely to be designed, controlled, and
sometimes even ghost-written by marketing departments, rather than
academic scientists.
Companies routinely delay or prevent the publication of data that show
their drugs are ineffective. The majority of studies that found such
popular antidepressants as Prozac and Zoloft to be no better than
placebos, for instance, never saw print in medical journals, a fact that
is coming to light only now that the Food and Drug Administration has
launched a reexamination of those drugs.
Today, private industry has unprecedented leverage to dictate what doctors
and patients know--and don't know--about the $160 billion worth of
pharmaceuticals Americans consume each year.
This is an unsettling charge that many (if not a majority) of doctors and
academic researchers don't want to acknowledge.
Once grasped, however, the full scope and consequences of medical conflict
of interest beget grave doubts about the veracity of wide swaths of
medical science. As Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of The Journal of
the American Medical Association (JAMA), puts it, "This is all about
bypassing science.
Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don't know
what papers they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn't know
what to believe."
Clinical trial and error
How did we get to this point? What effect is industry influence having on
the treatment of patients? And why are the medical journals not more
vigilant to weed out papers that have been distorted by conflict of
interest? The answers to these questions begin, oddly enough, with an
amendment to U.S. patent law called the Bayh-Dole Act. Passed in 1980,
Bayh-Dole for the first time permitted universities to commercialize
products and inventions without losing their federal research funding, the
seed money for innovative research.
The brainchild of George Keyworth II, President Reagan's science advisor,
who was watching the United States get beaten in world markets by the
Japanese, Bayh-Dole was intended to stimulate advanced technological
invention and speed its transfer from university labs into private
industry, where it could be put to work spurring U.S. productivity.
It seemed like a win-win proposition. Indeed, Bayh-Dole has helped launch
the biotech industry and has propelled several life-saving products to
market.
The basic research behind Gleevec, for instance, an incredibly effective
new anti-cancer drug, was done by a university scientist. The drug's
manufacturer, Novartis, stepped in and provided additional funding for
development. In 1984, private companies contributed a mere $26 million to
university research budgets.
By 2000, they were ponying up $2.3 billion, an increase of 9,000 percent
that provided much needed funds to universities at a time when the cost of
doing medical research was skyrocketing.
And what about us patients? What are we to do with the knowledge that much
of what passes as science in medicine is little more than gussied-up
marketing?
There isn't much we can do. And so, I say if you're ill, if you are
ailing, or just sick at heart, go find a doctor who listens, who holds
your hand.
Just make sure you find a doctor who looks at evidence, not opinion, and
when she pulls out the prescription pad, start asking a lot of questions.
Shannon Brownlee is a fellow at the New America Foundation.
SEE:
Gangsters In Medicine - Rense.com Gangsters In Medicine By Thomas Smith
Valley@healingmatters.com. c. 2002-3 By Thomas Smith All rights reserved
12-23-2 ...
http://www.rense.com/general33/gang.htm
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-28, 7:06 pm |
| The link between industry, authors and their results By Jeremy Laurance
23 April 2004
Cancer drugs: Just 5 per cent of studies funded by the pharmaceutical
industry reached unfavourable conclusions about the companies' drugs
compared with 38 per cent paid for by non-profit organisations. ( Journal
of the American Medical Association , 1999)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/he...sp?story=514316
Drug firms profit from 'murky' link with journals, study shows Companies
are misleading doctors, patients and governments to push their medicines,
says a special edition of the 'BMJ' By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs
Correspondent
30 May 2003
The "murky" relationships between the world's leading pharmaceutical
companies, supposedly independent medical journals and family doctors are
exposed in the British Medical Journal today.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/he...sp?story=410738
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-28, 7:06 pm |
| SPACES REMOVED (top article)
Doctors Without Borders
Why you can't trust medical journals anymore.
By Shannon Brownlee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
For the past two decades, medical research has been quietly corrupted by
cash from private industry.
Most doctors and academic researchers aren't corrupt in the sense of
intending to defraud the public or harm patients, but rather, more
insidiously, guilty of allowing the pharmaceutical and biotech industries
to manipulate medical science through financial relationships, in effect
tainting the system that is supposed to further the understanding of
disease and protect patients from ineffective or dangerous drugs.
More than 60 percent of clinical studies--those involving human
subjects--are now funded not by the federal government, but by the
pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
That means that the studies published in scientific journals like Nature
and The New England Journal of Medicine--those critical reference points
for thousands of clinicians deciding what drugs to prescribe patients, as
well as for individuals trying to educate themselves about conditions and
science reporters from the popular media who will publicize the
findings--are increasingly likely to be designed, controlled, and
sometimes even ghost-written by marketing departments, rather than
academic scientists.
Companies routinely delay or prevent the publication of data that show
their drugs are ineffective. The majority of studies that found such
popular antidepressants as Prozac and Zoloft to be no better than
placebos, for instance, never saw print in medical journals, a fact that
is coming to light only now that the Food and Drug Administration has
launched a reexamination of those drugs.
Today, private industry has unprecedented leverage to dictate what doctors
and patients know--and don't know--about the $160 billion worth of
pharmaceuticals Americans consume each year.
This is an unsettling charge that many (if not a majority) of doctors and
academic researchers don't want to acknowledge.
Once grasped, however, the full scope and consequences of medical conflict
of interest beget grave doubts about the veracity of wide swaths of
medical science. As Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of The Journal of
the American Medical Association (JAMA), puts it, "This is all about
bypassing science.
Medicine is becoming a sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land, where doctors don't know
what papers they can trust in the journals, and the public doesn't know
what to believe."
Clinical trial and error
How did we get to this point? What effect is industry influence having on
the treatment of patients? And why are the medical journals not more
vigilant to weed out papers that have been distorted by conflict of
interest? The answers to these questions begin, oddly enough, with an
amendment to U.S. patent law called the Bayh-Dole Act. Passed in 1980,
Bayh-Dole for the first time permitted universities to commercialize
products and inventions without losing their federal research funding, the
seed money for innovative research.
The brainchild of George Keyworth II, President Reagan's science advisor,
who was watching the United States get beaten in world markets by the
Japanese, Bayh-Dole was intended to stimulate advanced technological
invention and speed its transfer from university labs into private
industry, where it could be put to work spurring U.S. productivity.
It seemed like a win-win proposition. Indeed, Bayh-Dole has helped launch
the biotech industry and has propelled several life-saving products to
market.
The basic research behind Gleevec, for instance, an incredibly effective
new anti-cancer drug, was done by a university scientist. The drug's
manufacturer, Novartis, stepped in and provided additional funding for
development. In 1984, private companies contributed a mere $26 million to
university research budgets.
By 2000, they were ponying up $2.3 billion, an increase of 9,000 percent
that provided much needed funds to universities at a time when the cost of
doing medical research was skyrocketing.
And what about us patients? What are we to do with the knowledge that much
of what passes as science in medicine is little more than gussied-up
marketing?
There isn't much we can do. And so, I say if you're ill, if you are
ailing, or just sick at heart, go find a doctor who listens, who holds
your hand.
Just make sure you find a doctor who looks at evidence, not opinion, and
when she pulls out the prescription pad, start asking a lot of questions.
Shannon Brownlee is a fellow at the New America Foundation.
SEE:
Gangsters In Medicine - Rense.com Gangsters In Medicine By Thomas Smith
Valley@healingmatters.com. c. 2002-3 By Thomas Smith All rights reserved
12-23-2 ...
http://www.rense.com/general33/gang.htm
| |
| PaulKing 2004-12-28, 7:06 pm |
| I agree. Medical journals are now little more than less glossy drugs
company brochures.
The sad thing is that when you have companies with advertising budgets
running into the billions they are in a position to buy most everyone.
Money and medical care simply don't mix in the long run. A new Lear Jet or
actually helping some poor black woman in Watts is a no brainer for a
drugs company executive.
Wooosh........and just look at those leather seats. "I feel just great"
|
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